1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine and a printer, a control method for image forming apparatus, and an operation apparatus of equipment. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus having an operation unit for input of image formation-related operation and for display of a processing status, and a control method for image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, office automation equipment such as a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and a printer has become more multifunctional with the advance of digital technology and network technology, and has been used in offices or the like as information terminal equipment (e.g., image forming apparatus) for handling electronic information or paper information. For the information terminal equipment installed in offices, there has been increasing demand for improving its installability (the degree of freedom of installation environment) such as the capability of the equipment being installed in a center area of office space or between desks. To cope with this, a technique of configuring an operation unit of an image forming apparatus to be pivotable for use from a plurality of directions has been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-305814).
However, by simply making the operation unit pivotable for use from a plurality of directions, it is difficult to sufficiently improve the installability of the image forming apparatus. Thus, a further improvement in the operability or in the operation of the entire apparatus is required. For example, in the image forming apparatus operable from its front and rear sides, there are the following problems.
In a case where the operation unit is operated by an operator from the front side of the apparatus and then rotated by another operator for operation from the rear side of the apparatus, the operator on the rear side sometimes erroneously gives an instruction for unintentional apparatus operation without aware that apparatus operation settings performed by the operator on the front side are left unchanged.
In addition, each operator is required to perform a cumbersome operation of changing a setting screen over to a desired function screen each time after rotating the operation unit, especially if the frequency and tendency of use of functions (such as copying and fax transmission) are different between the operators on the front and rear sides of the apparatus.